The weather had been flat-out depressing over the last week for the Yankees. Following a 41-degree day in the series finale in Pittsburgh on April 6th, the Yanks had not taken the field in temperatures above 50 since, including one of the coldest games in franchise history last Tuesday in Detroit.

After a week of cold, rainy, and damp weather, the Yankees finally got to play without ski masks and hand warmers on a 57-degree night in the Bronx. After their offense had cooled off with the weather over the past week, the Bronx Bombers re-emerged on Monday night against Seth Lugo and the Royals. A quartet of lefties went deep off of Lugo and Carlos Carrasco pitched easily his best game in pinstripes as the Yankees took their opening game against the Royals, 4-1.

A concerning trend entering play for the Yankees was the lack of command from their pitching staff. They entered tonight’s game averaging 4.7 walks per game, the worst in MLB. For all his faults early on, Carrasco hasn’t had much of those issues through three outings, but he walked two of the first three batters he faced in the first. The veteran didn’t break, though, bouncing back to strike out Salvador Perez and induce a fly ball from Michael Massey.

Entering play on Monday, Lugo had a career 2.55 ERA with 45 strikeouts in 35.1 career regular-season innings against the Yankees. Notably, that included only two home runs allowed. That’ll be important information later.

After a strong first inning, he allowed a single to Paul Goldschmidt and a walk to Jasson Domínguez in the second before escaping with no damage. Lugo was efficient all night, which allowed him to go deep in the game.

Carrasco had settled in, retiring seven in a row before getting into a battle with AL MVP runner-up Bobby Witt Jr. He survived a few mistake pitches that were fouled off on 3-2, Carrasco dropped a slider right below the knees that Witt crushed into the left-field seats to make it 1-0, Royals.

A pair of hits in the third couldn’t scratch anything across on Lugo, but Carrasco responded by putting up a zero, thanks in part to a nice play by Domínguez.

Although they had three hits to this point, the Yankees weren’t hitting Lugo that hard. That changed when Jazz Chisholm Jr. homered for the second straight day in the fourth, his sixth home run of the season, tying the game at one.

That ties Jazz not only with Aaron Judge for the team lead but for the MLB lead with five others.

Carrasco got through the fifth inning and ended his outing, allowing just one run on one hit and two walks. He had a rough first, but from that point onward, his command was crisp and he mostly stayed away from the heart of the plate. Notably, Carrasco was frequently able to get the Royals to expand the zone, even if he wasn’t racking up whiffs.

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It was a breath of fresh air from a guy who entered play with a bloated 7.71 ERA. A quick five-and-dive is all the Yankees could ask for. Just like that, Carrasco’s ERA is down to 5.94 — not pretty but more palatable from an emergency fifth starter.

Leading off the bottom of the fifth, Trent Grisham jumped on a 3-2 fastball on the inside part of the plate for his fourth home run of the year to take the lead. Just two batters later, Ben Rice pulled an 0-1 cutter into the right-field seats for his fifth bomb of 2025 to make it 3-1. After a Judge strikeout, Austin Wells ambushed a middle-in fastball for his first long ball since the opening series for the Yankees’ fourth home run in the last two innings.

When the dust settled, Lugo had given up four home runs and the Yankees led 4-1 after five.

Fernando Cruz was first out of the bullpen in the sixth and mowed down the top of the Royals’ order, generating five whiffs and getting two of them on nasty strikeouts of Witt and Pasquantino.

After he did the same to the Royals’ captain, Tim Hill came on and made quick work of Massey and Maikel Garcia before turning it over to Luke Weaver for the eighth. Despite still not being quite there velocity-wise, he worked around a two-out walk and put up another zero.

As a result of the Yankees attacking early in the count all night, Lugo managed to pitch into the seventh despite a subpar outing. John Schreiber got into a jam in relief in that seventh inning, but struck out Wells to strand the runner.

Paul Goldschmidt stayed blisteringly hot against left-handed pitching with an eighth inning double off of Daniel Lynch IV. While Goldy is hitting .367 normally, he’s a ludicrous 12-for-21 with four extra-base hits against lefties. The Yankees stranded their first baseman at second base and handed the ball over to Devin Williams, who was looking for his first save since Opening Day.

Williams coughed up a hit to Witt and walked Perez to get in a jam, but he induced a trio of fly balls that stayed in the ballpark to nail down his second save.

It was a great game for Yankees pitching, holding everyone not named Bobby Witt Jr. a hitless 0-for-25.

Ace Max Fried is on the mound tomorrow as the Yankees look for the series win. Michael Wacha will get the ball for the Royals with first pitch from Fried at 7:05pm ET.

Box Score